Resilience: Can it be learned?

In the organizational context, a resilient workforce can be built through various dialogues, innovative assignments, a support network, mentoring, and guidance. Let’s explore how.

It is 5 AM on the clock, Ria wakes up to get ready for work, makes some food for herself, and switches on her laptop. She meets and greets her new colleagues on chat and starts to prepare for her onboarding in a new company. She is excited to begin a new adventure. 

On the same onboarding call, is also Steve, who woke up just ten minutes before the call and is not that enthusiastic about this change. He misses his old colleagues and is also extremely anxious about his new role, as he makes a career transition. 

For some people change is an energizer, a motivator; in fact, these people may seek out change and thrive on it. For other people, it is just the opposite, and change is experienced as exhausting and demotivating, something to put up with and be endured. And even though there is no agreed definition of resilience, it fundamentally relates to one's ability to respond to change, stress, and adversity, positively.

Knowing how change affects you, your peers, and your workforce can help determine learning and development strategies that will allow you to build a much more resilient workforce for a world of work where the only constant is change.

Once discovered and understood how change affects everyone differently, the important question to ask is: Can resilience be learned?

Resilience is not a passive quality, but an active process. How we approach life, and everything it can throw at us has a massive impact on our experience. According to psychologist Susan Kobasa, there are three main elements that resilient people possess: challenge, commitment, and control.

In the book, ‘Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness’, Dr Hanson also discusses the scientifically grounded foundation for lasting wellbeing. He cites inner strengths including grit, gratitude, compassion, and courage, that can fortify resilience to help overcome life’s inevitable adversities. So yes, resilience can be learned, encouraged, imparted and harnessed. 

In an organizational context, a culture of resilience can be fostered and among the workforce the competency can be built through various ways: challenging projects, a support network, mentoring, and an empowering work culture that allows people to push past their mistakes. Let’s explore how: 

How can business leaders, HR & L&D professionals help?

Complex problems & challenging opportunities

“Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems.”

- Gever Tulley

How often do you give your employees the chance to solve different problems, or do you wait for external pressures to take them by surprise? It is true that we can’t predict change, we can’t foresee a crisis. To prepare them for this change, talent must be indulged with diverse opportunities. They should be encouraged to work out of their comfort zones. This can be encouraged by enabling people to flex within their roles; encouraging self-development and upskilling, entrusting them with key projects and responsibilities, and enabling them to build relationships with colleagues across silos. That way, when crises do occur, people are already communicating, collaborating, and out of their comfort zone. 

Some organizations also foster resilience through simulation learning and gamifications, wherein they put the employees in a business scenario or a crisis situation they could face in the future. People often find that they have grown and now are stronger as a result of a struggle.  

Learning from failure 

Failure has always been the best teacher and time and again world renowned leaders have proven that. But leaders rarely give themselves and the employees a chance to experiment and fail. HR leaders and business leaders should hence work together in building a culture where failure is welcomed as a springboard for growth and an opportunity to learn and upskill, rather than something to be shied away from. Enable the talent to make mistakes, accept their mistakes and learn from them. 

Talent should be encouraged to confront failures and understand them, and leaders must work along with them to help them deconstruct these failures and learn from them.

As the quote that never gets old says, “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.”

But it should also be a two-way dialogue, where leaders are empowered to discuss their failures and what can be learned from them. We all need to get a bit more comfortable making failure part of our everyday vocabulary, and a more transparent component of our careers as a whole.

A strong support network

Caring and positive workplace relationships provide social support which nourishes further emotional resilience and also makes teams feel more connected – which can also lead to them being more productive. Whatever the crisis or the stress trigger may be, people often need to hear other points of view in order for them to get a bit of perspective. As leaders, in fact, you can guide talent based on your own experiences and adversities you may have faced in your life. 

Through a strong support network, the employees can guide each other and help each other sail through the storm. 

How can you learn resilience yourself? 

Respond & not react 

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. 

-Charles R. Swindoll

Easier said than done, yes! But it is the bitter truth. How do you want to shape your life? When facing change, try to put your efforts where you can have the most impact, you feel empowered and confident. Change the narrative of your thoughts, replace them with positive affirmations and look for solutions. 

Part of resilience comes from the knowledge that you have a choice; that you can respond in an intentional way that reduces your stress rather than just reacting to what is happening.

Commitment & Purpose 

Being committed to a larger purpose and your goals often provides a compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning. From concepts like ‘Ikigai’ to ‘Essentialism’, there are many ways in which you can help yourself identify what motivates you, guides you, and inspires you. 

As Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles say, “There is a passion inside you, a unique talent that gives meaning to your days and drives you to share the best of yourself until the very end.”

Take care of yourself 

Most importantly, practice self-compassion. Be kind to yourself. Take care of your well-being. Some experts recommend mindful journaling, yoga, and meditation. Others may find more positive energy by playing a sport, doing something creative, or simply going for a walk. 

Don't let negative thoughts derail your efforts. Instead, consistently practice positive thinking. 

So when the next challenge or change comes, remember, that this time the ball is in your court: Do you succumb or do you surmount?

Source: People matters 24 Jul, 2020

 

Are you an authentic leader?

The rapidly changing world of work requires agility, flexibility and adaptability of leadership styles and approaches to an ever-changing landscape. The current global pandemic has further accelerated the need for these skills and authentic leadership.

“I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I’ve become. If I had, I’d have done it a lot earlier.” – Oprah Winfrey

It’s amazing how many of us have two sides to our personality, a ‘work me’ and a ‘home me’. At work, we often try to come across a certain way, whether it’s to garner more recognition or to fit in with our managers and colleagues; we end up changing ourselves and how we act. This is especially true in leadership, where managers often feel pressure to fit their personality to match their role. The problem is that by ‘acting the role’ of a leader, those around them often feel like they’re being lied to or deceived. 

Then leaders are stunned when their employees don’t like them, don’t trust them and end up leaving. But it could be better if individuals can remain authentic in their leadership approach, they can bring their whole self to work while still being effective, productive and inspiring leaders.

What is authentic leadership?

The idea of authentic leadership has been around for a long time, even if it was known by different names until Bill George’s book ‘Authentic Leadership’ popularised the term in 2003. Since then, the term has become business jargon, often overused and not well enough understood to be meaningful. But there is something behind the jargon – ideas and concepts that have been around for centuries that can help leaders lead people by having a sense of self-awareness, identity, honesty and passion.

We all have a different idea of what authentic leadership is, based on our own knowledge and experiences:

“At its most basic level, authenticity means being genuine – not a replica, not a copy or imitation. Authentic leadership holds making the most of our strengths, recognising and trading off our weaknesses and taking full self-accountability for the impact we have on others. What authentic leadership is not about is adopting the styles or traits of other leaders.” – Steve Robinson

The key behaviours of an authentic leader

The central component of authentic leadership is genuineness, which means every authentic leader is different. However, there are several markers that these leaders tend to share.

Authentic leaders:

Demonstrate behaviours which enable you to trust in them all of the time – they’re approachable, visible, and they show up in the same way each day

Take ownership when they have made a mistake and share responsibility for any mistake

Show the necessary courage to push further up the leadership chain, to question current status quo or defend their people or processes

Continually commit to their own learning in order to understand themselves as a person and how they and others see the world

Have an ability to get their ego out of the way - they truly empower and develop others

They influence and inspire others by revealing a bit about themselves – being an authentic leader means being human and building real connections with people

Deliver great outcomes over longer periods of time

There is a perceived level of expectation around what a great leader should do and how she/he should behave. These expected norms can create myths about leadership being inspirational, exhibiting unrelenting confidence, having unwavering decision making, showing unshakeable self-belief and revealing no signs of personal weakness. In authentic leadership, whilst some of these may well help in the execution of the role, the real test is somewhat more grounded.

Deep self-awareness: The foundation of building authentic leaders

Self-awareness builds and grows – it’s a lifelong journey of learning from experiences and being able to share these along the way. Self-aware leaders resonate with others by telling stories of success and defeat, of good times and tough times and of accomplishments and setbacks. Truly knowing their values – who they are, what do they believe in, what’s the right thing to do – for the right reason and in the right way is often all that leaders have to help navigate by when the deep mist of uncertainty prevails.

In being able to ‘lift their veil’ and reveal their true selves, authentic leaders transfer humility, credibility and trust to those around them. They generate believability by being ‘human’. People follow them not through the leader’s manipulation, carrot or stick strategy, or through threats or even because of their power or position – but through compelling influence. Authentic leaders demonstrate some vulnerability and at the same time fully understand their genuine influential ‘edge’ with others.

 Authentic leaders have a ferocious tenacity on the longer-term goals. They align their personal values, develop future leaders and build sustainable successful organizations.

In a world increasingly impatient for results and demanding immediate outcomes, authentic leadership is continuously tested. The pressures of instant delivery versus longer-term desirable outcomes are a true leadership tension in itself. Authentic leaders though, know what they can and can’t settle or compromise on in the short term – because it will impact on the longer-term outcome. 

How to be an authentic leader

An in-depth study by the Harvard Business Review of effective leaders ranging in ages from 23 to 93 found that there is no “cookie cutter leader”. Every person interviewed had a different idea of what an ideal leader looks like, with each individual having a unique combination of characteristics, traits, skills and styles that led to their own success. The one common theme was that all the leaders were consciously or subconsciously taking in their real-world experiences continuously, and using those experiences to frame who they were at their core. As a result, they found the “purpose of their leadership and learned that being authentic made them more effective”.

This study is one that we all can learn from, whether we’re managing other people professionally or not. That’s because the study shows that leaders are not born leaders; they become great leaders throughout the course of their life by taking in experiences and letting it guide them and their leadership style. Often we assume that strong leadership is innate, that you either have it or you don’t, and that employees will automatically be good leaders just because they’ve been promoted into that role. However, like most things, leadership is a skill that has to be learned, refined, and honed over time. Essentially, it’s a continuous learning journey. Applying that way of thinking is something that anyone can adopt well before they reach managerial level, or even before they enter the workforce.

“Authenticity is the alignment of head, mouth, heart, and feet - thinking, saying, feeling, and doing the same thing - consistently. This builds trust, and followers love leaders they can trust.” – Lance Secretan

The new reality of work requires agility, flexibility and adaptability of leadership styles and approaches. The current global pandemic has further accelerated the need for authentic leadership. The complexity is only expected to increase around technical, economic, financial and social issues as uncertainty looms over the entire world of work.

Perhaps all of us striving to be our unique, authentic selves will create a collective array of authentic perspectives, values and principles to complex situations. The tensions and conflict here will be vividly apparent but paradoxically this may also give rise to the existence of the one last bastion of stability – authenticity.

Source: People matters 05 Aug, 2020

 

6 Ways a Crisis Can Help You Cultivate a Growth Mindset

 

Disruptive, stressful experiences are often opportunities for growth. Research has shown that crises can help lift the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra that pervades many organizations, creating new opportunities for people to voice their ideas on how to do things better.

For example, when the pandemic forced an insurance company we advise to go fully remote, the challenge of remote work prompted several teams to explore better ways of tracking progress. Field employees proposed new metrics for tracking sales contacts with customers, as well as new ways to integrate these metrics with existing key performance indicators on the Salesforce platform. Leadership liked the new system so much that it’s now being scaled nationally.

Similarly, basketball and hockey teams often show improved performance after losing teammates to injury, because the remaining teammates are able to discover new ways of working together. As teams are forced to take on new challenges, face new uncertainties, and recover from mistakes in the Covid-19 era, they begin to internalize that both their own abilities and those of their peers are not fixed, but rather can be developed.

This growth mindset can serve us — and our teams — well during this crisis. Below, we offer six suggestions for managers looking to leverage the transition to remote work to nurture a growth mindset in themselves and their teams.

Be patient. While it may feel like a long time, we are still only a few months into the widespread shift to fully remote work, and we are still learning. By now, most everyone knows how to share a screen or a run a breakout session on Zoom, but it may take longer to reshape deeply ingrained work practices for a remote environment. Be patient with yourself and your people. Remember to recognize effort, even if outcomes don’t yet live up to your expectations.

While it’s nice to talk about the benefits of a growth mindset, learning a new practice is challenging and the lack of immediate, measurable progress can be discouraging. Forgive yourself, and be generous with others — try to focus on the effort being put in and the valuable insights you’re learning from that effort, rather than the lack of immediate results.

Teach the growth mindset to others — and reinforce it in yourself. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spent his first months on the job teaching people the value of a “learn it all” culture rather than a “know it all” culture. He led by example, sharing monthly videos where he reviewed his top learnings and prompted groups across the company to discuss theirs. Consider doing something similar on your team, though perhaps on a smaller scale. For example, you might dedicate part of a weekly or monthly team meeting to a discussion of what team members have learned during the crisis so far.

Send the right signals. Both what you say and how you act send critical messages to others. For example, in a recent study, leaders asked newly promoted executives, “What have you done since we last talked, and what if anything have you learned from it?” every two weeks. Fairly quickly, because they knew he would be asking, they started to pay more attention to their own growth and were astounded by how much they were learning.

You too can send signals to your team. You might ask about learning, or informally reward progress made, lessons learned, and recovery from mistakes as much as star performance. To model what a growth mindset looks like in action, you might share not just your final triumphant plan, but also the setbacks and potholes along the way.

Reset expectations and revisit established practices. The shift to remote work provides a perfect excuse to reset your team’s expectations around giving and receiving constructive feedback. If you’re a team leader, try asking, “What three things would you try to change if you were in my role?” Modeling openness to feedback will make it easier for your colleagues to accept feedback themselves.

This crisis is also a good time to encourage your team to assess and improve established practices. Online work is significantly less forgiving of coordination and leadership failures, so it’s a great opportunity for involving others in implementing immediate course corrections. This might involve starting meetings by communicating what you know, indicating that much is still unknown, and inviting teammates to share not only their knowledge, but also their concerns and questions. By getting things out on the table, more issues can be addressed.

For example, a team leader we advised shared that after just a few weeks of remote work, an open conflict broke out between two of her employees. The tension, as it turned out, had been simmering for months. As the team leader started to sort out the situation, she realized that the root of the problem was that one of the employees had a rather terse and direct communication style, which the other employee found offensive. When work went remote, the tonal ambiguities in their emails coupled with the pre-existing tension in their relationship caused the problem to escalate quickly, resulting in a major conflict.

In trying to learn from this episode and revise team practices, the team leader facilitated a session with the entire team to brainstorm how best to communicate in a virtual environment. One new practice the team developed was the “two email rule”: if two emails sent to a colleague are insufficient to resolve an issue or reach an agreement, you are expected to call or video conference with that colleague. After implementing this rule, the team both had fewer misunderstandings between employees and was able to more quickly resolve complex work issues.

Get to know your teammates better. Working remotely, we’re coming to know our teammates in a different way. We see their workspaces, their children, and their pets. One executive jokingly commented that before Covid, if a cat jumped onto a teammate’s laptop during a (rare) virtual meeting, the typical response was embarrassment, apologies, and a hastily disabled video feed. Now, he said, people just laugh it off. Studies suggest that being less worried about social evaluation and embarrassment stimulates experimentation and creativity, both of which are key to growth. Additionally, other research shows that personal identity expression at work can also boost employee creativity.

While the Covid-19 crisis presents a variety of new challenges, it also creates new opportunities for leaders to cultivate a more expansive growth mindset in themselves and their teams. Though it won’t be easy, the right mindset can help teams to better coordinate, innovate, and own their own futures, making it possible not only to weather the crisis, but to come out of it stronger.

Source: HBR 20 Aug, 2020

The future is here: The time to invest in human skills is now

In the now of work the organizations which see the most successful growth will be those that hire based on human skills such as resilience, agility, building successful relationships, leading with vision and heart, and excellence in communication.

The last ten years have been a rollercoaster for leaders in almost every industry and country. The economic crash of 2008 had such a profound impact that levels of productivity are still lower than they were all those years ago – and yet advances in technology are moving at such speed that we simply can’t predict what the future will look like for many industries. The pandemic has further brought more economic challenges and accelerated tech innovation. But the present and the future is more uncertain than ever before. 

It's a huge challenge for leaders to enable productivity today, while trying to predict what will be needed in order to be successful tomorrow.

So much of the future world of work can seem uncertain. Leaders are wrestling with questions such as

How will my organization have to evolve to stay ahead of competitors?

What shifts in strategy, focus, and investment will be required?

Who has the skills and expertise to lead us through all-encompassing change?

Human skills investment is exploding

It’s impossible to tell what opportunities will arise in the next few decades. What we can tell you though, is that people, and their magnificent and irreplaceable human skills, will never be obsolete. It may seem counterintuitive, but in this age of rapidly advancing technology, human skills are becoming ever more vital in successful organizations.

There’s a worldwide rise in soft skills investment that tells its own story. 2019 saw $15 Bn invested in soft skills in the US alone, and that’s predicted to rise to around £38 billion in the next seven years.

The smartest leaders know that the hard skills needed in the coming years can’t yet be predicted – but they do know that the forecasted changes will require people whose human skills are second to none. The organizations which see the most successful growth will be those that hire based on human skills such as resilience, agility, building successful relationships, leading with vision and heart, excellence in communication, giving and receiving developmental feedback, and a willingness to be open, coachable, and adaptable.

Technology is an enabler of humanity

There’s a recognition that, while innovative tech may be an enabler of great relationships, investing in human skills is going to become the key differentiator in many industries. In part that’s because leaders recognize that the changing world of work will require us all to be supremely adaptable, comfortable adopters of new technologies, and able to roll with new processes and organizational structures. But it’s also because new technologies are going to free us up from much of what now occupies us – the dull-but-necessary back office work, such as order management and administration. 

 For many people, their working lives will be gloriously unburdened by innovative technologies, but leaders will have to make smart decisions about how to fill the gap that’s left behind.

Research suggests we’ll fill our time instead with wringing value out of human relationships; building stronger and deeper connections with customers who we can then truly partner with; mentoring and coaching those at the beginning of their careers; working in numerous squads and streams that each require something different from us. All of these changes and more will require emotional intelligence more than anything that has come before. Just look at these numbers and think about what it’ll mean for your organization.

This shows that within ten years, organizational reliance on physical and manual skills, and basic cognition will shrink. Instead, organizations will be recruiting and training people who can demonstrate higher cognitive skills, as well as highly developed social and emotional skills. Change of this scale is going to involve a lot of organizational redesign: who can be retrained and in which areas, who has transferable or untapped skills that can be used, what skills are there simply no room for as we shift strategic focus.

 The time to plan to invest in human skills was a decade ago: the time to actually invest in human skills is now. 

Your organization is likely to have ambitious plans to increase its size, impact, or profitability; the best way to achieve these goals is to commit to the development of your people, who will make your strategic goals a reality.

Source: People Matters 24 Jul, 2020